Cañon City High School students make asking prom date an event

Shealie Browning asked Louis Dille to prom by having a police officer pull him over and hand Dille a note that read PROM? (Courtesy Photo)

For a split second Tuesday afternoon, Cañon City High School junior Louis Dille thought he'd been asked to prom by a police officer.

Then out of the police car popped Shealie Browning. That's when it clicked.

Browning went to extreme lengths earlier this week to ask Dille to the dance -- the senior went through all the channels of the police department, hunched in the back of the car so not to be spotted and had a tail on them to capture it all on video. She wrote "PROM?" on a warning slip and had the officer hand it to Dille.

It's all part of the culture at CCHS: See how big you can go, see who you can top.

Devin Freda and Jacob Kwitek asked Brooke Paolino and Danika VanGorder by collecting sand and spelling PROM with it. They made a valley in the sand and poured acetone into it. When Paolino and VanGorder joined them, the boys gave them lighters and had them set the sand ablaze. (Courtesy Photo)

"It's kind of a competition between everybody, who can do better, who can make the bigger scene," said Browning, who made her scene by having Dille stopped between Safeway and Dairy Queen on 10th Street. "And it's just fun. It's fun to go to big lengths."

"It's by far the best way I've seen someone ask someone to a dance before," Dille said a day after flirting with a ticket. "The most extreme length I've seen someone go to ask someone to prom."

Fellow Tigers have done scavenger hunts throughout Cañon City and have created scenes in the middle of a crowded area at school. They've asked at movies with the cooperation of theater staff, they've conspired with teachers to do it in front of class and had singing grams follow a student to each class with clues that they were about to be asked to prom.

Seungjeong Park asked Kelly Hook to prom after he created a video where he did different things and played them in reverse before burning a piece of paper that said, "PROM?"

Played backwards, it had the reverse effect and seemed as if the fire were creating the note.

Self-titled romantics, Devin Freda and Jacob Kwitek played with fire when asking their dates Brooke Paolino and Danika VanGorder. The two seniors collected sand and spelled "PROM" with it. They made a valley in the sand and poured acetone into it. When Paolino and VanGorder joined them, the boys gave them lighters and had them set the sand ablaze.

Something worked, because the girls said yes. In fact, no one could think of anyone who had ever said no when asking in an extravagant way. Paolino and VanGorder said they certainly wouldn't say no if someone goes through that much trouble.

Sometimes students ask CCHS Principal Bret Meuli to be a prop in the scheme. Once, a female student had him set up a locker search of her boyfriend. In the locker, she had set up a poster asking the boy to prom.

Here are a few of the ways students have asked their significant others to dances as shared on our Facebook pages.

Joanna Rak: My favorite way I got asked was this year for homecoming. I walked out to my car and the windows were blacked out with window paint. A little irritated, I opened the driver's side door and there were flowers and paper that said “my vision would be clearer if you would go to homecoming...” and I turned around and Jared Mews was standing there holding the “with me” sign.

Bonnie Burke: My boyfriend, Michael Barker III, for homecoming took a power point for my geology class, added a few slides, talked to my teacher making me go first. I had to get through practically all of it, then it showed him asking me the scariest, cutest thing ever. He then walked into the room with a single rose bouquet and my favorite candy Resse's.

Elise Green: My boyfriend, Kevin Murray, asked me to Springfest this year when we went to the movies. Before the movie started, a video began playing on the screen with a bunch of our pictures on it with our song playing in it too. And at the end of the video it was a recording of him asking me to the dance! Then he had flowers for me too, afterward.

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